Moddle coddled society in the UK
I have been sitting on my hands on this subject for quite a while now, I can no longer prevent my fingers from gracing the keyboard. The time has finally come.
The final straw for me is the e-coli outbreak, where petting farms have now been closed to the public because children who were at the farm contracted the disease after handling and stroking the animals.
Those farms would have been closed anyway, without the scrutiny of the media. Sure draw attention that there is an outbreak, but let's stop with the scaremongering. Move on to a new story.
I was a child once back in the 70s. I used to get covered in cow shit and mud, I used to stroke animals and put my fingers in my mouth, I also would eat sweets without washing my hands before hand. Did I once contract e-coli during my childhood? No I didn't.
If you tell your child to wash their hands because of the slightest bit of mud on their hands, isn't going to help their immune system.
I grew up in a era where children respected their parents and their elders and those in authority because we knew we would get a hiding from our parents or our teachers if we misbehaved, or didn't do our homework.
You would respect the police because we would get a clip on the ear and taken to see our parents.
When I used to get cuts and scrapes, the teachers would patch me up without a second thought and really look after you.
You could catch the bus and walk home without any trouble.
Do you know what has changed? It is fear.
Fear generated by the government, fear generated by the Health and Safety people. Teachers now fear repercussions if they dare to patch up a childs knee after a fall, for fear of being labelled a "child abuser".
Paedophiles have been around for generations, so what's different now? Nothing, just that the media strike fear into people, children are still going to get snatched or abused despite the best intentions of their parents, despite the media attention. If you are really worried about your child, get them a mobile phone so they can call you if they feel they're unsafe.
Wrapping up your children in cotton wool isn't helping to prepare them for the world.
Take some risks, let your children live their lives with the same freedoms you had when you were growing up.
We are in a really dangerous era in our evolution as a society, ruled by political correctness and FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).
Don't get me wrong fear in small doses prevents us from doing things that could endanger our own lives or those of others. But we do not want to become paralysed with fear so we end up doing nothing at all.
